The Haram's languid years of listless ease
Are well resign'd for cares for joys like these:
Not blind to fate - I see where'er I rove
Unnumber'd perils- but one only love!
Yet well my toils shall that fond breast repay,
Though fortune frown, or falser friends betray.
How dear the dream! in darkest hours of ill,
Should all be changed, to find thee faithful still!
Be but thy soul, like Selim's, firmly shown-
To thee, be Selim's tender as thine own!
To soothe each sorrow-share in each delight-
Blend every thought-do all but disunite!
Once free-'tis mine our horde again to guide-
Friends to each other, foes to aught beside:-
Yet there we follow but the bent assign'd
By fatal Nature to man's warring kind,

Mark! where his carnage and his conquests cease—
He makes a solitude and calls it

peace !' *

At the conclusion of the poem, a Turkish superstition is beautifully introduced. A lady, after death, is transformed into a white rose; which, though withered by storms or plucked from the stem, continually buds and blooms anew: while her lover, changed by transmigration into a bird, sings to her incessantly through the night:

Within the place of thousand tombs

That shine beneath, while dark above
The sad but living cypress glooms
And withers not, though branch and leaf
Are stamped with an eternal grief;
Like early unrequited Love!

One spot exists which ever blooms,
Ev'n in that deadly grove.

A single rose is shedding there

It's lonely lustre, meek and pale,
It looks as planted by Despair-

So white-so faint-the slightest gale
Might whirl the leaves on high;

And yet, though storms and blight assail,
And hands more rude than wintry sky
May wring it from the stem-in vain-
To-morrow sees it bloom again!

The stalk some spirit gently rears,

And waters with celestial tears.

For well may maids of Helle deem

That this can be no earthly flower,

Which mocks the tempest's withering hour

And buds unsheltered by a bower,

"Ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant." (Tacitus.) Probably,

this is an unconscious plagiarism. Rev.

Nor

Nor droops-though spring refuse her shower
Nor woos the summer beam.-

To it the livelong night there sings

A bird unseen-but not remote-
Invisible his airy wings,

But soft as harp that Houri strings
His long entrancing note!

It were the Bulbul but his throat,

Though mournful, pours not such a strain ;
For they who listen cannot leave

The spot, but linger there and grieve
As if they loved in vain!

And yet so sweet the tears they shed,
'Tis sorrow so unmixed with dread,
They scarce can bear the morn to break
That melancholy spell,

And longer yet would weep and wake,
He sings so wild and well!

But when the day-blush bursts from high-
Expires that magic melody.'

Perhaps our readers will think that none of these extracts are entirely equal to the similes on Modern Greece, and on the Cashmire Butterfly, in the Giaour: but they will unGoubtedly see in them the same character and genius; and we have already said that we consider the merit of the present tale to consist less in detached passages, than in the spirited and poetical manner in which the story is wrought. The opening stanza, describing the Clime of the East,' should not pass unnoticed:

Know ye the land where the cypress and myrtle

Are emblems of deeds that are done in their clime,
Where the rage of the vulture-the love of the turtle —
Now melt into sorrow-now madden to crime? --

Know ye the land of the cedar and vine?

Where the flowers ever blossom, the beams ever shine,
Where the light wings of Zephyr, oppressed with perfume,
Wax faint o'er the gardens of Gul in her bloom;

Where the citron and olive are fairest of fruit,

And the voice of the nightingale never is mute;

Where the tints of the earth, and the hues of the sky,
In colour though varied, in beauty may vie,
And the purple of Ocean is deepest in die ;
Where the virgins are soft as the roses they twine,
And all, save the spirit of man, is divine,' - &c.

Some couplets betray great carelessness, and in a poem of this length are not excusable; such as the following:

I'd joy to see thee break a lance,
Albeit against my own perchance.

It must also be observed that such rhymes as brought and remote, poured' and coward,' are inadmissible.

We are very happy that it is consistent with our duty to award so much praise to poet who, from his rank and situation in life, is able to render such important services to the cause of literature, and to raise it so highly in the estimation of the world, as the noble author now before us; and we claim the merit of sincerity (always, we hope, our due) with the more confidence in this instance, because it will be in the recollection of our readers that we were among the first to hail the appearance of Lord Byron's muse, and to acknowlege the promise of the dawn of that genius of which the more advanced beams have shone so brightly. May the sentiment which we then suggested to Lord B., in the words of the great Roman. orator, never fail to animate and direct his career in literature and through life! We trust that we shall soon have to meet his Lordship again; and, without diminishing the merit of the work before us, we hope that it will be to greet his efforts on a higher theme. †

THE

ART. VIII. Madame de Staël on Germany.

[Article continued from p. 426. of the last Volume.]

HE xiiith chapter of this popular book reverses the scene, and transports the reader from the monotony of southern to the activity of northern Germany. It is justly observed that the Germans read to know or to enjoy, and not to talk; and that, in their commercial world, the society even of well-read men is little tinctured with literature. The Germans belong (as it were) to the business or matter in which they are engaged, and attach ideas of pedantry and impertinence to the mention of books at the ordinary, or in the club-room. Madame de Staël, however, has not seen much of the commercial world in Germany,

See his first publication, Rev. Vol. liv. N. S. p. 256.

We have heard it remarked, more than once, that The Bride of Abydos' is, in strictness, a misnomer, because Zuleika is not actually married, nor indeed actually about to be married. Johnson defines a bride to be a woman newly married;" and Bayley derives the word from a Saxon verb signifying "to cherish or keep warm.” Perhaps, however, the word is in modern usage capable of signifying a betrothed woman, which it appears Zuleika was; and, at all events, sach usage is within the license that is never denied to poets.

and

and trusts too implicitly to report; otherwise, she would have distinguished the hospitable and conversational tables of the booksellers.

Instead of contrasting Vienna with Leipzig, which would best have displayed the peculiarities of northern Germany, the fair author runs back to the Rhine, and again opposes the French character to the German. Even in the ferry-boat, the noise of the French servants, and the silent patience of inconvenience among the Germans, becomes obvious; and the toll-gate-keeper, contriving to open his gate, and to receive his due, without opening his door, is sketched with striking truth

of nature.

To Saxony in particular, the fourteenth chapter is devoted. The diffusion of intellectual culture is there prominent. Innkeepers and custom-house officers are commonly acquainted with French literature; and they would scarcely be sufficiently accomplished for their stations, if they could not address the traveller in the language of that country. Music is practised in every house the linen-weaver keeps his forte-piano beside the loom, and relieves his fingers, when stiffened from the shuttle, by employing them to dance on the keys. A feature of the German character, of which the English tradesman has some traces, is to attach importance to every thing. The lock of his door must turn well; his pipe must be of Hungarian soap-stone; his cork-screw must have come from England; and he will read a quarto volume on the theory of inclosed fires before he purchases a new oven-stove. This sense of im

portance extends to laying out a penny; it must be expended in the best manner, or not at all; and the discussion usually terminates in favour of some better opportunity: hence the All the working-classes exemplary frugality of the nation. seek their relaxation from labour in literature: the stone-cutter rests with his book in his hand, and his pipe in his mouth. A certain warm contemplative delight, in which animal and intellectual intoxication seem to mingle, constitutes the sovereign good, the bliss of soul, the supreme felicity, of a true German. It is a pleasure which he can attain in solitude, and which he can silently enjoy in company, but which he considers as enhanced by the presence of a quiet sympathy.

The honesty of the people, and the probity of the tradesmen, are duly and justly applauded. The great liberty of the press in Saxony is also remarked: indeed, it far transcends that which is vouchsafed in England, and would here be called a pernicious licentiousness. German writers are of opinion that literature has remedies within itself for all the evils which it The effect of calumny, they think, is to be over

can cause.

come

come by re-statement; that of scandal, by inculcating moral tolerance; and that of obscenity, by defining the safe limits of indulgence. They profess to despise innocence, as unarmed against temptation; and they would found virtue merely on a preference for moral beauty, unaccompanied by displeasure at those who delight more in nudity and caricature. Their religious equals their moral latitude; as if truth, as well as virtue, were in many things only what men can agree to call by that name.. The prologue to Goethe's Faustus brings the three persons of the Trinity on the stage; and not a single northern critic, we believe, in any of the leading Reviews, flinched, or winced, or pretended to be shocked the book was printed at Tubingen. The superintendant Herder, or Professor Paulus, or indeed a village ecclesiastic of the Saxons, would smile in scorn at the fretfulness of an English bishop, in recommending a prosecution of Ecce homo. Schelling teaches aloud his pantheism, and Fichte his atheism, and these isms sound as well in the public ear as any other rhime to schism. The limited number of various forms, or theories, in which human minds can think about those things which do not come under the cognizance of the senses, are severally described and mentioned with equal indifference by Kant, and the subordinate metaphysicians.

Among the Germans,' (says Mme. de Staël, with great felicity of expression,) truth resembles those statues of Hermes which have neither hands to seize nor legs to walk. To think and to act have seemingly no connection with each other. Opinion is an affair of the head, not of the conduct. Nothing, however, is so respectable as these peaceful conquests of reflection, which employ insulated men without fortune or power, and connected together only by the social worship of thought.'

Chapter XV. sketches Weimar; which was in fact the proper court to select for giving a general idea of the spirit that prevails among the petty princes of Germany, since it carried to higher perfection than any of its rivals the taste which animated them all. What Italy was under the Medici, a constellation of minute principalities uniting to give brilliancy to the lyre, Germany has been ever since the decease of Frederic the Great. While he lived, he concentrated the exclusive attention of his country; but, from the time of his death, the King at Berlin has been a man who might be eclipsed, and many petty sovereigns of Germany have attempted to surpass him. These princes have been competitors with one another for the honour of securing by a pension, to be expended within the state, the residence of a distinguished poet, artist, or philosopher; and the Duke of Weimar managed to encircle his coronet with the brightest and most shining jewels. Herder died there; and Wieland, Goethe, and Schiller, were living there during the REV. JAN. 1814.

F

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